Cupid: Conspiracy Between Love and Reason
by Atomdancerrr
Summary: Short. Warm. Can a "Psychotic Delusional Barkeep who thinks he's Cupid" who works as a Barkeep, & his Psychiatrist work together to save a "mutual Client" from his own foolishness?


Short. Warm. Can a "Psychotic Delusional Barkeep who thinks he's Cupid" who works as a Barkeep, & his Psychiatrist work together to save a "mutual Client" from his own foolishness?

Legal disclaimer. Now I DO own all the Greek gods! :0) I climbed Mount Olympus last week, found the breadbox sized Olympian god-keep and smuggled it back to America in my luggage! :0) It's on my book shelf now in my living room wedged between to my Doctor Pooh Bear and my GA (Good Attitude) Mr P Bear! If ABC ever realizes what a treasure they threw away twice and try to make a wide screen movie out of "Cupid and Psyche" they are going to have to pay ME for the privilege! That is if Cupid even lets them. He will hardly quit playing Star Trek on my Computer long enough for me to let me upload this! (I get so tired of writing these legal disclaimers! We fanfiction Writers are giving all these TV Shows free advertising and they know it).

Author's note. Both Omar Khayyam and Cupid are wrong here. Check out You Tube's video "The Real Time Machine," and you will sleep a lot sounder. It is highly unlikely something like 9/11 will ever happen again! Reality is weirder and much more wonderful than anything I have ever written! It is also much safer now.

Cupid: Conspiracy Between Love and Reason

by

Elizabeth Hensley 8-)

Dr Claire McCrae, Psychiatrist, Therapist, Self help Expert and Best Selling Author sat at the counter at Tres Equis bar and grill and picked at her Enchiladas with mole sauce. Her face was glum.

Trevor Pierce is a barkeep and manager there. He is also her patient because he is supposed to be a perfectly sane and competent but still extremely psychotic delusional who thinks he is Cupid the Greco-Roman god of love. Really of course he _is_ Cupid and certainly not crazy! But he certainly isn't complaining! Only a _real _lunatic would complain about the US Government issuing him a highly intelligent Woman more beautiful even than his Mother, Venus the goddess of love, to pay attention to him!

But today it seemed she was the one with a problem! Well a god he was, though he had been stripped of his powers and cast down to the Mortal realm for not being a very good one! But it hardly mattered to his self esteem any more. Because it turned out he was an excellent barkeep! He knew how to listen and give great advice!

"Claire, what's bothering you?" He asked gently.

She sighed, "I really shouldn't tell you."

He said gently, "Oh it won't hurt to tell old Cupid. I'm older than I look, wiser than they give me credit for and I give solutions to problems no one would even think of and often they work! What's the harm of telling a harmless lunatic like me? I know how to keep a secret and if I did tell, I'm harmlessly crazy. So who would even believe me?"

Claire smiled and nodded appreciatively. "So that's how you it! You're darn good! I grant you that! A lot of Therapists ought to study your patter and take notes! But still I shouldn't tell!"

"But Claire it helps to talk! Who keeps saying that to me? Come on! Barkeep! Customer!"

Claire couldn't help laughing at Trevor's parody of her often stated, "Doctor! Patient!" to remind him of their boundaries. She finally said. "You know I may have legal and ethical grounds here, sort of. I am not allowed to discuss a Patient's situation with Outsiders but I can with another Colleague who is also treating him if it is for the Patient's best interests. To bring a Patient's barkeep into his treatment plan is really stretching it! But it may be the only thing that works here. Barkeeps actually do the work of lay Therapists You certainly do. People know you are delusional. You don't even try to hide you are absolutely positive you are from the top of that mountain over there in Greece and yet Folks come to you for advice in droves as if that were a shingle on your wall instead of something that ought to make them extremely leery! I get the feedback all the time! 'Cupid had the solution!' Yes. Sigh. You lunatic! Half the time now they are even calling you Cupid! I just about give up with you! I'm throwing in the towel and suggest you file for a religious tax exemption and get Classicism reinstated as a legitimate, tax deductible religion. Because, why not? You have as much right to the money in that area as anyone else claiming they know how we all got here!'

Trevor laughed, "I would. Except I don't mind paying my fair share for space ships and roads and that we don't have to speak Japanese or German or worship Allah at the point of a sword. I think the US government needs the money worse than I do!'

Claire grinned, "Now keep saying things like that and I may have a reason to get you locked back up again!"

They both laughed, Trevor a bit nervously.

Claire grinned, "Don't worry! I'm joking_. Not_ being a tax evader hardly counts as something Baker Actable! But to not exactly break, (but stretch to the point it is screaming) the law about confiding in" (she made quote marks with her fingers "'a colleague' concerning a mutual Patient's treatment plan. Here's the problem. Charley Wilcox is in here every day and drinks and drinks and drinks! But he only takes his antipsychotic pill hit and miss. He was doing very well when his Daughter lived in town and made sure he got it every day but the very week she left for Baltimore to join her Fiance and he was left in charge of his own medication his mental state has been sliding backwards. Last week he came to me and said your Barkeep Merv disappeared right in front of him and then a few seconds later was on the other side of the restaurant! So he's starting to hallucinate again. He hadn't done that in years!"

_Ah oh! Gotta have a talk with Uncle Mercury. He's gotten a little too careless!_ "So Claire the problem is getting these" (Cupid whipped a pill bottle out from under the bar) "into Charley every day."

Claire's eyes grew wide as she took the bottle. "Trevor how did you get his medication!"

Trevor sighed. "After we discussed why you were so glum this was going to be my next topic. This was my tip yesterday! Really Claire there are plenty who would have been delighted! My own personal contribution to a pharming party! But whatever you think about my mental state you KNOW I am too smart to be doing drugs illegally! I looked at the label and saw you were the one who had prescribed them, which pretty much belays the untrue myth Dr Claire McCrae is completely anti-med. You refuse to over prescribe but you prescribe a healthy level of meds when they are useful. I was going to hand them right back to you. You know I was."

Claire nodded almost absentmindedly in perfect acknowledgment of that truth, paying more attention to the bottle. "Trevor this bottle is almost full! If he'd been taking them right it would be almost empty!"

Trevor frowned. "He's really been a naughty Mental Patient!"

"An endangered one! You were across the street long enough to see what happens when Patients on psyche meds decide on their own to suddenly go off of them. The relapses are not pretty and the legal and social consequences just do not go away! The law shows no mercy, few understand, reputations are ruined, bills ran up during mania still have to be paid, People injured and killed don't stop being injured and killed, suicides don't reverse themselves, property doesn't become undamaged, words said in uncontrollable rage in moments of true insanity don't fly backwards into mouths again and feelings don't become unhurt!"

Cupid intoned, "'The moving finger of Time has moved!

and having writ!

Not all Man's anger!

Nor his tears!

Can erase a single word of it!'

Omar Khayyam. Time circles so technically something could be erased. But it wouldn't be an easy or a guaranteed repair and it would take literately forever to get back to the point in Time to try for a rewrite!"

Cupid was indeed a whole lot older than he looked!

Cupid bent his head in sorrow, thinking of thousands of years of tragedies of both gods and Mortals!

Claire bent her head in sorrow thinking of huge numbers of past treatment failures!

They both swallowed and raised their heads and gazed into each others eyes. For once telepathy did work! *_Damn the rules and ignore the laws! We have to save Charley from himself!*_

Clare said slyly. "Well my goodness! Charley forget his medication and left it here and a certified lunatic got a hold of it!" She casually set the bottle back on the counter and Trevor quickly palmed it with his apron while pretending to wipe up a spill. "Now usually psyche drugs should not be mixed with alcohol. But this is the kind that it would be better it got into him that way than not at all. And if he repented and refilled his prescription and he accidentally got a double dose for some inexplicable reason, all that would happen would be he'd be very drowsy. But since he doesn't drive and goes nowhere but here and across the street and to the convenience store up the road and to the church at Feed New York just two blocks from here on Sunday I don't think that would be too much of a problem! Now I am just sort of talking out loud to myself. You understand that?"

Trevor giggled. "Now doing the same because ethically we barkeeps are expected to show discretion about revealing our Clientele's drinking habits also. Charley is not from a Bar Owner's point of view a good Customer. What a certain Psychiatrist just said about him drinking and drinking and drinking is actually not true. He comes in here and nurses one or two drinks all day and evening and we lose more on free peanuts and him using up a seat than we make on him. Lots of Bar Managers would have a Customer like Charley strongly encouraged to take his patronage elsewhere! But Felix realizes a properly ran bar is actually a service to the community, especially when you just happen to be across the street from a hospital with a huge Psychiatric Clientele and surrounded by Section 8 apartment housing. So I've been reassured to my deep relief it's alright to just let lonely Charley sit here and talk to me and hear tales from me of far off Olympus and for that matter Star Trek recaps and anything else I can think of to keep his soul from dieing of the fact he now has nobody and even when his Daughter lived with him she made it quite openly clear she wished her crazy, unable to work Dad was elsewhere, or even dead! Felix considers Charley still one more of his almost homeless Strays! He has helped so many! You know: Dogs! Cats! gods! Mental Patients! He can't understand how he got me before my stint in your little hospitality house over there across the street when I wasn't even connected to you then! He asked me just how that happened that I was crazy and I just found out he was a soft touch for Lunatics on my own without having the proper connections through Sachs-Gordon first! I told him my family, knowing how I am, must have guided me here! But anyway back to Charley, I really don't have a lot of chances due to his not drinking like a Fish. I really just have just one chance to, ah, you know. And by the way he always takes a mixed drink, not something out of a can or tap. Many bars cheat on the alcohol levels just to keep the costs down and the fights down. Felix has never encouraged that figuring People should get what they pay for. I tend to go the other way wanting People hot so they will fall in LOVE! But its amazing what a little power of suggestion can do in place of most of the alcohol! But again I am just talking out loud to myself here too!"

Claire actually giggled! Then she said, "Of course being in possession of someone else's medication is a felony. But just in case this turns into a worst case scenario, what I say in open court about my poor delusional mental patient who thinks he is a god's 'diminished capacity for comprehending the consequences of his actions' which can be used for his legal defense, and what I say to the Judge privately in his chambers about what we are really up to, which would certainly get him on our side most likely, might be two different things!"

Then Trevor giggled.

She then added slyly "And of course I am so stressed! So busy! It is just conceivable at the end of this month I might just accidentally leave some more pills of this kind somewhere where someone who legally should not have them might be able to get ahold of them. It's never happened before. But no matter what you think _you_ are we Doctors certainly are Mortal and do make mistakes!'

Trevor smiled and winked. "We little g gods have been known to make a few mistakes also. But I have strong suspicions Omar Khayyam can relax by the reflecting pool in his lawn chair with his pomegranate juice and his 39 eternally beautiful young Maidens frolicking before him and his thousands of indescribable delights in the Muslim paradise section of New Jerusalem that was such a hoot for Walt Disney and Don Bluth to put together when You Mortals built Christ His Giant 1500 mile long Cube according to the Revelation Chapter 5 clause and not have to worry any time-fingers are doing any nasty jottings today, Dr Claire Bear McCrae! Now eat your enchiladas like a good Psychiatrist! They are getting cold."

But the next morning right before lunch, right before Charley Wilcox came in, Cupid fingered the pills in his pocket and thought about things and frowned. _Poor Charley! __He is like my Grandfather Zeus who sometimes has to have his meds hidden in his pomegranate juice. Mortals and little g gods are so very much alike sometimes! But we do give Zeus the option of taking them on his own first and most of the time he chooses too. We are not even giving Charley this chance!_

Cupid thought about that a minute. He took the pills out of his pocket and stared at them and frowned. _He left them with me! He has known me for almost a decade now. He knows my opinion of illegal drugs, even of abusing alcohol though I dispense the stuff in moderation. He also knows that not taking prescribed drugs the way one is supposed to counts just as much as drug abuse as taking something you should not be taking and I certainly would not approve! Did he not expect I would say __something to him?_

Cupid's mouth flew open. _He __**wants**__ me to do something here! This wasn't to lose them! He wants me to be responsible for seeing he takes them the way his Daughter was. Because, poor Fellow! I am all he has left!_

Cupid's eyes misted over. _Claire Bear and I almost made an awful mistake! I don't even have to lecture him!_

Eleven O:clock came. Tres Equis was officially open. "Trevor" took the key out of the safe and unlocked the door and swung the it open and like clockwork as usual in came Charley along with a few other Regulars and a few others who were not Regulars but just waiting for lunch right at eleven. Charley sat in his usual spot and said what he always said. "My usual martini, Trevor."

"Trevor" mixed it with loving care and put it in front of him, as usual. Then he took out a little tiny blue and white pill. "Oh by the way Charley, you left your pills here yesterday. I love you in a Straight Guy sort of way so I am going to make sure you get one every day the way it says on the bottle right along with your libation. OK?"

Charley's eyes lit up. There was a look of relief on his face. He put out an opened hand.

Trevor dropped the pill in his hand.

Charley took it.

Trevor smiled, very relieved himself that it was going to be so simple, that no duplicity was going to be needed after all! He exclaimed joyfully, "Cheers!"


End file.
